Every year, thousands of miles of roadway are under construction. These roadway construction projects vary in scope from simple patching and resurfacing to the construction of a brand new road. In most cases, traffic must continue to flow through the construction zone, which requires a reconfiguration or rerouting of the traffic flow in order to protect the drivers and the construction workers. Rerouting the traffic flow requires additional road markings to be installed to alert drivers of the new and temporary traffic pattern. In some situations, new paint markings may be sprayed, but paint markings take longer to apply and are difficult to remove, which makes them less than ideal for a temporary situation.
Another method of marking pavement is the use of special tapes. These roadway or pavement marking tapes may be made from a variety of materials, such as vinyl, and have an adhesive layer on one side that is made to adhere to a treated pavement surface. Road tapes are relatively easy to install and, in some instances, the manufacturer will provide a proprietary tool to aid in the installation. However, removal of this tape after a construction projection is completed can be a difficult task, especially if the tape has been adhered to a pavement surface for a prolonged period of time and exposed to high heat and traffic volume. Peeling the tape off the pavement surface in one piece is desirable because it is faster, however doing this can be challenging and difficult work.
One method used to remove road tape is by attaching a loose end of the tape to a vehicle and attempting to peel the tape off the roadway by accelerating the vehicle forward in the direction of the tape that is still attached to the pavement. This is a cumbersome way to remove the road tape and the high horsepower of the vehicle makes ripping the tape very easy to do. Moreover, in the case of large roadway construction projects, there may be thousands of feet and hundreds of pounds of road tape to peel and dispose of. Peeling the tape off the pavement surface with a vehicle or other means leaves many long pieces of tape that require additional labor to gather and load into trucks or dumpsters for disposal. For example, gathering these pieces of tape may require a loading machine.
Other peeling devices exist that feed the peeled road tape directly into the bed of a truck, however such devices result in inefficient and unstable loading of the used road tape. Furthermore, these devices require that a large amount of tape be initially peeled from the pavement surface and threaded through the device. These devices also rely on carefully matching the speed of the removal device with the speed of the truck that is carrying the used tape. Any mismatch in speed will result in the tearing of the tape and the rethreading process will have to be performed again.
The foregoing background describes some, but not necessarily all, of the problems, disadvantages and shortcomings related to current road tape removal devices. There is a general and pervasive need in the field to provide a device for removing road tape in an easy, inexpensive manner, which also results in easy disposal of the peeled tape.